Get COMMITTED with me!

I’m really looking forward to starting the 40 Day Yoga Challenge this weekend and I’ve been putting some thought into what I want the Challenge to do for me. Of course, I quickly realised that the Challenge will do absolutely nothing for me unless I make it work for me! So here are 3 things I’m thinking about in the lead up:

• I’m not always so good at thinking through (or executing) self-discipline, so I’m going to work with COMMITMENT instead and produce the same outcome: completing the 40 Day Yoga Challenge. So here’s my overall commitment (declared publicly on the Ten Toes blog!):
  
  I, Emily Pereira, commit myself to completing the 40 Day Yoga Challenge because I really want to do something that will uplift my soul and increase my health and happiness. 

  So expect to see me at the Living Yoga Workshop, the Deeper Yoga Workshop and 30 classes somewhere in between! If you see me, ask me how I’m going with it! I promise I’ll give you an honest answer – and my appreciation for supporting me by keeping me accountable .

• The only way I’m going to be able to make sure I can fulfil my Challenge commitment to myself is to have a PLAN before the Challenge starts on Sunday. So, Sub-commitment A:
  
  I commit to having prepared a schedule for myself for the period of the 40 Day Challenge to ensure I attend 30 classes. 

  (Thank you Google calendar, you’re very helpful!)

• I know that meditation isn’t an official part of the Challenge, but it’s a really important part of yoga practice for me, so it’ll be my personal addition. Sub-commitment B:I commit to meditating for 20-30 minutes everyday for the period of the 40 Day Yoga Challenge. 

  As someone who has committed to similar ways of embracing yoga more deeply in the past, I know the impact it can have – and there is nothing I would recommend more highly! There is nothing else in the world that has ever made me feel that good!

So commit with me! Respond to this blog post with YOUR statement of commitment to your 40 Day Yoga Challenge!

Om Yoga!

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In and Out of Habit…by Rachel Pereira

Habits can easily stand in the way of a healthy, happy existence, but we are infinitely capable of changing our ways.  You wouldn’t be practising Yoga or reading this blog if you didn’t already believe that!  Yogic science tells us that it takes 40 days to fully develop a new habit or to drop a current destructive habit.  So in less than six weeks you could be free of something you want to no longer be bound to, or you could have introduced something to your life that will support your happiness.

Here are my suggested five steps for creating your own 40 Day Project:

1. Pick a habit – just one
Let’s be realistic, too much change all at once is really stressful and we want to set ourselves up for success.  Choosing achievable goals is the first step.  Change is almost always challenging, so be kind to yourself.  Choose something that will make a real difference in your life – the prospect of a big payout from your efforts will be inspiring.

2. Commit by writing it down
There’s something powerful about the spoken word (that’s a whole article, right there) and writing something down is a version of this.  You want to make the goal tangible and yourself accountable for it, rather than allowing it to be some airy-fairy idea floating around the ethers.  Stick a neatly crafted commitment on the fridge, the bathroom mirror, your blog, by your desk, on your dashboard, in your journal…wherever it feels ‘real’.  It can also be helpful to spend some time thinking about and writing down the ways your new habit (or releasing the old one) will make your life better.  This can be your “touchstone” if you have moments when you need to re-motivate yourself.  You may even want to seek out some inspiring quotes by others to add to your own thoughts.

3. Define how you will achieve it
This is your plan for how you will change your habit.  Set a date to start.  Check your calendar for events that might make achieving your goal more difficult than it needs to be. For example, if the habit you want to form is drinking less alcohol, a major social event where you’ll be surrounded by your traditional drinking-buddy crew might make it hard to stick to your plan.  Of course, it’s not always possible to completely avoid temptation and temptation’s presence can also provide a good training ground for doing things differently – but have a strategy for dealing with those situations.  Using our drinking less alcohol example, craft a clever/fun way to say ‘no’ to all the drinks that take you over your decided limit or set a “pumpkin hour” you will head for home.

4. Get support
Choosing who to surround yourself with during your habit-changing 40 days can be tricky – and not always something you have control over.  If you have to work, you’re going to have to interact with those you work with, for example.  However, you don’t have to tell them everything you’re doing, so if they are unlikely to be supportive, just work away at your 40 Day Project quietly alone at work and find support from elsewhere.

Support can come from loads of different places.  Here are some suggestions:

• Friend or family members (often willing to be supportive just because they love you, but where your new habit will affect them, your efforts might also affect their willingness to be supportive)
• Mentor (this may be a friend, an employer or someone who just seems to have appeared in your life for the divine purpose of being a role model and support person)
• Yoga Teachers (they are actually trained to be an impartial, compassionate guide and have experienced personal change and inner growth…along with the difficulties that arise)
• Online forums relating to the topic of your habit (this can be a great way to connect with others who have direct interest and experience in your current situation)

5. Repeat, repeat, repeat!
In other words (or one word…er, repeated, really): practise, practise, practise!  A habit is a behaviour that we engage in over and over again.  So not doing something repeatedly – or repeatedly doing something different – is central to breaking the cycle.

After a while, the behaviour becomes almost automatic – we don’t put much thought into the decision to engage in that behaviour, we just do it. Essentially, you are making a 40 day commitment to being mindful of the decision to engage in a certain behaviour, to bring the process of habit into your awareness and make a different choice each time it comes up.  The more practice you get at this, the quicker and deeper the change will be.

Mindfulness brings up another point – even a behaviour that seems ‘positive’ can be unhelpful if it is not performed mindfully.  Eating lots of fruit and vegetables can be unsupportive of health if they were prepared in ways that doesn’t suit your constitution or other parts of a balanced diet are neglected, for example.  So be mindful of mindfulness when you are choosing words to describe how you would like to change your habit in Step 2.

Apply a balance of determination and patience during your 40 Day project.  Harness your enthusiasm without burning yourself out and never beat yourself up if your plans temporarily fall over – just pick them up and keep going.

Using mindfulness philosophy, you could say that any habit is a bad one – we should all apply mindfulness…in each moment…every day.  I’m working on it.  But in the meantime I’ll use habitually healthy behaviours with as much mindfulness as I can muster to help me along life’s path and will try not to beat myself up about it!

Please tell us your experiences of making and breaking habits by commenting below this post.  Your experiences might really help someone else with their own 40 Day Project!

Sending everyone supportive thoughts for your 40 Day Project,

Rachel

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